WOW 27

WOW 27 - Famous vs Notorious

Good Afternoon Friends,
Today's WOW would be a little bit interesting for people who like to be challenged. Go ahead, show me what you have got.
Today, I have an answer. What I need is a Question. I would be very happy if one could come up with a question. The question will be shared @ the end of this message.

Giving a slight introduction, I would like you to see the meaning of the following two words:
1) Famous: (definition from Google) celebrated: widely known and esteemed; "a famous actor"; "a celebrated musician"; "a famed scientist"; "an illustrious judge"
2) Notorious: (definition from Google) ill-famed: known widely and usually unfavorably; "a notorious gangster"; "the tenderloin district was notorious for vice";

Seeing the above two words, we can understand that both have the same meaning, but one is in a negative sense. i.e., Famous means fame for some good activity whereas Notorious means fame for some bad activity.

So the question goes like this:
Q: What is the ________ for the word famous?
A: Notorious.

Folks, saddle up your seat belts and fill in the blank to complete the question. Eagerly waiting for the person who would bring the best question to my answer.

Danish :)

WOW 26

WOW 26 - ESP/ ESC and Traction

Good Afternoon Friends,
Yesterday, we talked about ABS (Antilock Braking System). Today we shall discuss on ESP (Electonic Stability Program) AKA ESC (Electronic Stability Control) and Traction.

Electronic Stability Program/ Control:
Like ABS, ESP is also designed to improve vehicle's handling, particularly at the limits where the driver might lose control of the vehicle. Say, you are using only ABS and have avoided collision with a vehicle. ESP determines how stable your vehicle is after your steer away. At times, when we steer a lot towards a side, the vehicle tends to capsize. ESP prevents this.

ESP enhances Driver control and helps maintain directional stability under all conditions.

ESP compares the driver's intended direction in steering and braking inputs, to the vehicle's response, via lateral acceleration, rotation (yaw) and individual wheel speeds. ESC then brakes individual front or rear wheels and/or reduces excess engine power as needed to help correct understeer (plowing) or oversteer (fishtailing).
Traction Control:
* In road cars, Traction Control is used mainly as a safety feature in high-performance cars, which would otherwise need very sensitive throttle input to keep them from spinning when accelerating, especially in wet or snowy conditions. It is also used in off-road vehicles to enhance traction on loose surfaces.
* In race cars, Traction Control is used as a performance enhancement, allowing maximum traction under acceleration without wheel spin. When accelerating out of turn, it keeps the tyres at the optimum slip angle.
On road, Traction is generally combined with ABS. This gives the vehicle a better grip of the road. Very useful for slippery roads.

ABS, Traction Control and ESP when combined together in a single package gives the driver safety, stability and control over the vehicle. Bikers, listen up; ABS and Traction control are available for Bikes too. Not sure about ESP though.

Check these videos from YouTube to understand more about ABS, Traction Control and ESP.
Link 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3m24bjkfg0 (5 mins 33 secs)
Link 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR1SSxpKitE (9 mins 37 secs)


Danish :)

WOW 25

WOW 25 - ABS

Good Afternoon Friends,

Today let us go and explore the motoring world. A section that was never touched in WOW till date. Most of us drive, the most important thing while driving is to have the control over the vehicle that you drive (i.e., to Drive and not be Driven). When the control is lost, accidents happen. Today I am going to discuss something which helps us have control over our vehicle (steer our vehicle) even when we apply brakes. That is called Anti-lock Braking System (ABS).

ABS when combined with a few other safety features like Traction Control and ESP gives us a whole lot control and improves our driving. Today I will concentrate on ABS.

When we apply our brakes, for a vehicle w/o ABS, the wheel gets locked and we will be unable to steer the vehicle just because our wheels are locked. With ABS, the wheels do get locked (to brake) but it has complete control over it. i.e., The wheels does not remain locked till the moment we take our legs off the brake pedal. The ABS controls the brake and it knows well when to slow down (lock) and when to accelerate (unlock) the wheels providing us with the ability to steer away.

A typical anti-lock system can apply and release braking pressure up to 20 times a second.

With such kind of system, we know that we always remain safe.

Check out the flash from http://www.bosch.com/assets/en/company/innovation/theme03.htm to see a graphical representation of ABS @ work.

Also check out this 53 seconds video from YouTube which demonstrates ABS @ work.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq4DDMMoomU&feature=player_embedded

Looks like this edition of WOW turned up the enthu in a few motorists.

Danish :)

WOW 24

WOW 24 - Months

Good Afternoon Friends,

Hope all of you liked WOW - Monthly Make-up.

August - This is a month named after Augustus Caesar. Till 8 B.C., this month was called as Sextilis in Latin, because it was the sixth month in the ancient Roman calendar. January and February were the last two months to be added to the Roman calendar, since the Romans originally considered winter a monthless period. They were added by Numa Pompilius about 700 BC. January and February remained the last two months of the calendar year until the time of the decemvirs (c. 450 BC), when it became the first and second month respectively.

Find below the details of all the months:

* January:

Named after Janus, the God of doors and gates.

This month opens the year.

* February:

Named after Februalia, a time period when sacrifices were made to atone for sins.

This was a Roman month of sacrifices and purification.

* March:

Named after Mars, the God of war.

Start of year for soldiers.

* April:

From aperire, Latin for "Open" (buds).

This is the month when trees open their leaves.

* May:

Named after Maia, the Goddess of growth of plants.

This is the month when plants really start to grow.

* June:

From Junius, Latin for the Goddess Juno.

Juno - Queen of the Gods.

* July:

Named after Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.

He reorganised the calendar.

* August:

Named after Augustus Caesar in 8 B.C.

He thought he was at least as important as Julius Caesar!

* September:

From septem, Latin for Seven.

Seventh month (counting from March)

* October:

From octo, Latin for Eight.

Eighth month (counting from March)

* November:

From novem, Latin for Nine.

Ninth month (counting from March)

* December:

From decem, Latin for Ten.

Tenth month (counting from March)

Now, that's the entire list.

Danish :)

Monthly Make-up - Volume 01 Issue 01

Good Evening Friends,
One month of completion of WOW. Not much introduction here.
Visit "http://sites.google.com/site/danishthomast/Home/WOWV01I01.pdf" to download the first Monthly Archive of WOW.

Suggestions and Comments expected to bring in a better issue in the following months.

Thanks,
Danish :)

WOW 23

WOW 23 - Multimedia Needs

Good Afternoon Friends,

Today I will be sharing with you a few sites that you would never regret bookmarking in your Internet life. How many of us over here would not be imterested in Multimedia. I hope everyone would be interested in some aspect of it. Be it Browsing and changing wallpapers, Listening to music, Watching videos, Working on Photoshop or any other Graphics software, Designing websites, etc., people use multimedia in a few aspects of life.

One of the site that I visit atleast once in a month is "http://www.smashingmagazine.com/". This is a huge portal and you will find the site more interesting the more you use it. I use this mainly to update my wallpapers every month.

There are a few other sites which you can Google out based on your specific interests. However, also check out "http://www.deviantart.com/" This one is a good site too.

Link:

1) Smashing Magazine (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/)

2) Deviant Art (http://www.deviantart.com/)

WOW News:

1) WOW Mailer had added it's 100th Reader today. (Excluding a few others who follow/ have subscribed WOW from my blog.)

2) WOW completes one month today.

3) Wait in for a Surprise WOW Mailer tomorrow.

Danish :)

WOW 22

WOW 22 - Temporary EMail (Kill Spam)

Good Afternoon Friends,

There are some really good websites out there in the World Wide Web (WWW) which offers a few useful stuff. Books, Videos, Tutorials, Wallpapers, etc. At times, we really don't use the resources provided by the website just because they want us to register.

We don't want to register due to fear of our mailbox being spammed. Yeah, that's right. There are some fake sites which promise to offer things on registeration. Once we do register, they spam us like hell.

Today, I will be discussing not on how to find the fake sites but on how to keep our mailboxes safe. There are a few sites out there which offers us temporary email boxes. We just have to logon to one such of them, choose our mailbox name and lo we can receive the mails there. All these temp mailboxes expire with time, so we really don't have to worry about them being spammed.

My favorite site for temp email is Mailinator. (Link: http://www.mailinator.com/index.jsp)

The alternate site which I use is GuerrillaMail. (Link: http://www.guerrillamail.com/)

Now lets not worry about spam anymore.

Danish :)

WOW 21

WOW 21 - Windows Logon Banner

Good Afternoon Friends,

In many of the organizations, they show a banner when we try to login to the system. Ever wondered how to get this one in your personal Machine @ home. Read on to know how. Again this is a Registry Hack.

Steps:

1. Open Registry Editor (Start -> Run -> Regedit)

2. Navigate to the path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system

3. Right click on the Right Pane and create New String values.

4. Rename the first string key as "legalnoticecaption" and add the heading that you wish to see here. (say. !!! Important Notice !!!)

5. Rename the second string key as "legalnoticetext" and add the text that you would wish to see here. (say. Visit: http://danishthomas.blogspot.com/ ;))

6. You are done. Next time you would see this screen before you get to the logon page.

Alternate Method:

1. Open Notepad and key in the following lines of code:

--------------------------------- Starts here --------------------------------- ' Exclude this line

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system]

"legalnoticecaption"="!!! Important Notice !!!"

"legalnoticetext"="Visit: http://danishthomas.blogspot.com/ ;)

You can put a new paragraph too."

--------------------------------- Ends here --------------------------------- ' Exclude this line

2. Save this file as say "Banner.reg" (Note the extension .REG)

3. Double click on the file to add the contents to the registry.

This way, you can show off by keying in some stuff (upto ur imagination). Well, the best of us could use this as a first step for an e-proposal. ;)

Danish :)

WOW 20

WOW 20 - Boost Internet Speed - II

Good Afternoon Friends,

Yesterday, I had discussed about one of the way to tweak the Internet Speed by removing the reserved bandwidth (20% for QOS) set by Microsoft Windows. Today, I shall let you one other way of tweaking the Internet Speed.

As per the HTTP 1.1 specification, the default number of connections to any web server is 2. This means at any point of time, we can have a maximum of 2 connections to that particular server.

E.g., Consider, we are connected to a server where we have requested to download 20 packets. Assume that to download each packet, we use one unit of time. Also assume that with one connection, we would be able to download only one packet.

So, as per out existing settings, we would be requiring 10 units of time (Max. of 2 connections) to transfer 20 packets.

Say, for example that we have changed the limit from 2 connections to 10. Then, these packets will require only 2 units of time to get downloaded. Well, that is a lot of difference if we are downloading a lot of information.

Steps to set this up:

1. Open Registry (Start -> Run -> Regedit)

2. Navigate to the path: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings"

Note: If there are two "Internet Settings", choose the first one.

3. Create two new DWORD value(s) by clicking on the right pane and choosing New -> DWORD Value

4. Rename the first one as "MaxConnectionsPerServer", double click on it, choose Decimal and enter a Value (say 10)

5. Rename the second one as "MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server", double click on it, choose Decimal and enter a Value (say 10). This is for Older HTTP 1.0 Servers

6. Close the Registry Editor. A few system will require a reboot for this settings to take effect.

Alternate Method:

1. Open Notepad.

2. Add the following lines in it.

---------------------------- Starts here---------------------------- Don't include this line

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]

"MaxConnectionsPerServer"=dword:0000000a

"MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server"=dword:0000000a

---------------------------- Ends here ---------------------------- Don't include this line

3. Save the file as "SetMaxConnections.reg" and close it.

Note: The file extension ".reg" is important.

4. Now, double click on the file to add the information to your registry.

Important Note: Kindly DO NOT set the "MaxConnectionsPerServer" value greater than 24.

Hope this was useful.

Danish :)

WOW 19

WOW 19 - Boost Internet Speed - I

Good Afternoon Friends,

Many of us have a really fast Internet Connection(How fast is the really fast?). We all know our computer could be tweaked. The same applies for our Internet connection too. That can be tweaked jus like our PC. There are two methods using which we can tweak our PC. One is by freeing up the bandwidth (20%) reserved by Windows to improve the Quality of Service (QOS). I will be discussing about this today. The steps you require to do are:

Steps:

1. Start --> Run --> gpedit.msc

2. Expand the Local Computer Policy branch.

3. Expand the Administrative Templates branch.

4. Expand the Network branch.

5. Highlight the "QoS Packet Scheduler" in left window.

6. In right window double click the "limit reservable bandwidth" setting.

7. On setting tab check the ENABLED item.

8. Where it says "Bandwidth limit %" change it to read 0 (ZERO).

9. Close gpedit.msc and lo, you've done.

NOTE: Few systems may require re-booting to take effect.

Doing this will give you an additional 20% of the bandwidth which Windows had reserved earlier for QOS.

Danish :)